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Prayer of the week

by
23 August 2013

Alison Fulford encounters the awesome with Rahner

"Not chatty": the theologian Karl Rahner

"Not chatty": the theologian Karl Rahner

O God, whenever I think of Your Infinity, I am racked with anxiety, wondering how You are disposed to  me. . . You must adapt Your word to my smallness, so that it can enter into the tiny dwelling of my finiteness - the only dwelling in which I can live - without destroying it. . . If you should speak such an "abbreviated " word, which would not say everything but only something simple which I could grasp, then I could breathe freely again. . . You must make your own some human word, for that is the only kind I can comprehend. Don't tell me everything that You are; don't tell me of Your infinity - just say that You love me, just tell me of Your goodness to me.

Karl Rahner SJ (1904-84)  from Encounters with Silence   (Sands and Co., 1969)

NOT understanding what is being said to us can be an anxious experience. Often, we can devise strategies to help us cope with situ­ations in which we struggle to grasp what is being conveyed. We take phrase books abroad; we look up on the internet the terminology that doctors use; and, in some cases, we just smile and nod, hoping to pick up the thread of the conversation later on. But what happens when there are no strategies that are sufficient to help us to overcome the divide?

Karl Rahner was a German Jesuit and one of the great theologians of the 20th century. In his pastoral workEncounters with Silence, he offers a series of prayerful addresses. Each one typically focuses on something that is causing a problem to his understanding of God, a little like the rub on an ill-fitted shoe.

As he ponders, however, Rahner discovers a new understanding of how God has ordered things, so that what was a problem becomes a gracious solution. Our prayer is one of these pivots, in which misunderstanding is resolved, and discord becomes harmony.

In the passages that come before this prayer, Rahner attempts to consider the greatness of God. I say "attempts", because what Rahner is really saying is that God far surpasses us limited creatures. God is all-wise, all-powerful, the source of all life, the origin of goodness. We might be able to think of a human person who reflects one of these virtues, but never completely, and never all of them together.

Considering God's greatness, Rahner grows afraid, and he uses the metaphor of a conversation to communicate his fear. If God should address him and speak such words as justice and life, infinity and love - indeed, all of the words that point to God's life - then he would suffer a terrible reality shock, and be utterly overwhelmed.

The solution is something far better than a coping strategy. Rahner asks for an "ab­­breviated" word to be spoken to him. To receive from God a message that he can understand and bear would be a dear relief. Rahner just wants to be assured that God loves him, and is good to him.

What is this abbreviated word: is it like some divine text-message (i luv u ϑ)? In the passages of the book which come after this prayer, Rahner makes clear that the word is not a "what", but a human "who": Jesus Christ brings the words of God's love to us, in a way that we can understand.

This prayer is a good antidote if our prayer-times have slipped solely into "chatty mode". Recalling the awesomeness of God is good because it is true, and should lead us into praise and worship.

This also has the great benefit of stirring up gratitude for the gift of Jesus Christ: God's abbreviated, understandable word to us. It reminds us that God longs for each one of us to enter into a lifelong conversation with God, and that this is a gift, not a dialogue that we can initiate by ourselves.

The Revd Alison Fulford is the Rector of Hickling with Kinoulton and Upper Brough­ton, in the diocese of Southwell & Nottingham.

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